The ATG platform includes an HTML-based administration interface that provides another way to inspect individual components at runtime, in addition to the Components window in the ATG Control Center. For more information about this administration interface, see the ATG Installation and Configuration Guide. The default interface displays a component by listing its contained children and the values of its properties. Individual components may override this default behavior and provide their own servlets to act as the interface for that component. These custom servlets may also subclass the default servlet, so that it looks like the normal default servlet, possibly with some additional information.
In order for a component to define a custom administration interface, it must implement atg.nucleus.AdminableService. When the administration interface is asked to display a particular component, it first checks to see if the component implements AdminableService. If it does, then Nucleus calls getAdminServlet to get the servlet that will display the component’s administration interface, then passes the call off to that servlet. If the component does not implement getAdminServlet, then Nucleus will use the default administrative servlet to display the component and its properties in the Component Browser.
The default administrative servlet is called atg.nucleus.ServiceAdminServlet. It contains a number of methods that may be overridden, as well as a number of methods that perform useful functions, such as formatting object values into HTML.
